I recently attended a wedding and a birth within a few days of each other, and they made me think about the big life events we build our lives around. These milestones are the kinds of moments that we say we’ve been waiting for all our lives. Not only do we call them the best days of our lives, but these are the kind of days that radically alter our futures. We are never the same.
Every couple has a wedding photo hanging somewhere on their wall and family photos scattered throughout the house. We have pictures and videos of these big life events, and we pass down stories and momentos for our children to use on their big days. In a sensationalized culture, it’s easy to think of our lives as a series of big days. We hop from one to the next like it’s a game of hopscotch. But what about the moments in between?
The Discomfort of Growing Pains
Weddings and births, in addition to other big days like graduations, all have one thing in common. They are the culmination of something. They are the fulfillment of a time of work and waiting. A wedding doesn’t just happen. It’s the celebration of a lifelong marriage commitment a couple makes, but it’s often preceded by months of waiting and preparation. It’s filled with change, transition, and potential conflict and tension. It’s filled with the discomfort of making big decisions and feeling exhausted while also excited. A long engagement often feels like it will never end; waiting for the wedding day is almost too much.
Birth is no different. The birth is the culminating event of the entire pregnancy. This child has been growing for nine long months, and its mama has been eagerly waiting to meet her newborn. But the months of waiting are filled with discomfort, nausea, sleeplessness, big emotions, and the physical symptoms of a body that’s growing and stretching to accommodate a new baby. Every mother will recall how sick they were of being pregnant and how eager they were for it to end. Even labor is filled with discomfort and hours of exhaustion and waiting before a mother gets to hold her child for the first time.
You could say the same for the sleepless nights of studying before graduation or the hours of sowing seed into the rough dirt before the harvest comes. Life is filled with big wonderful, life-altering events, but when we overlook the uncomfortable moments that got us there, we miss out on something so much richer.
What’s the Purpose of Waiting?
We don’t like the in-betweens. Often these seasons are filled with waiting, working, and wanting. They are times of unfulfilled longing, confusion, wrestling, feeling overwhelmed (or sometimes underwhelmed), and impatience. There’s a popular song paired with videos on Tiktok that sings, “can we skip to the good part?” How often do we ask this question? We truly see each big life event as a milestone and the complex moments in between as wasted space. We want our lives to be a movie montage, not a docuseries.
Yet, if we took out the in-betweens…would we still have the milestones? I wonder if the in-betweens are more valuable than we imagine. If there were no pregnancy, there would be no birth. If there were no wedding preparations, there would be no wedding celebration. If there were no brain-breaking study sessions, there would be no graduation. If there were no planting, there would be no harvest. In a way, the most “useless” parts are the most valuable. All the parts we cut out of the movie montage are the parts that matter the most. They make us who we are. They teach us who we want to be. They create a future for us to celebrate. But at the moment, they feel like nothing’s happening.
We need to focus less on the big days and more on the ordinary days. The days when it feels like nothing’s happening are often the days that are shaping your future. Think about trying to watch a seed grow or watching a pot of water boil. Eventually, a green sprout pops out of the dirt, and eventually, the bubbles start to break through the surface of the water. But until then, it truly feels like nothing is happening. And then, in a moment, it’s all happening at once. This is the rhythm of life. If we resist it, we will always be frustrated. If we try to control it, we will overwhelm our capacities. But if we embrace it, it will cradle us like a piece of driftwood slowly being carried to shore. The waves which could break it into a million splinters instead smooth its sharp edges and polish it into a cherished beach treasure.
The Hope of Holy Saturday
If we all believed that our in-between days were our most valuable, we might be surprised by the intimacy found in the intensity. We could trade exasperation for expectation. The joy comes in the morning, but there’s something beautiful about the stillness and the closeness of the night. There was one day in history that exhibited this like never before. It was a simple sabbath in a Jewish region of ancient Israel. Only days after Passover, the people were observing a day of rest and stillness. Yet, for a distinct group of disciples, their stillness would be better described as a series of fight, flight, or freeze responses. They were not still because of the sabbath – they were paralyzed. They were overcome with grief, confusion, shame, regret, fear, anger, disbelief, sadness, denial, panic, and weariness. They had just witnessed their messiah and friend brutally murdered on a Roman cross. He was dead.
Holy Saturday is a day that gets almost no recognition. We observe Good Friday and Easter, but we throw out the day in between as a non-event. It was so much more. The big emotions the disciples felt were valid. And we’ve all felt similar things when we were scared our hopes and dreams were falling apart. The disciples didn’t know what came next. They didn’t know what God was doing. They didn’t know if He had abandoned them. They wondered if there was something they should have done differently. They ran certain moments over and over again in their heads, wishing they had done better. Some of them wanted to curl up into a ball and fade away into the background, escaping a reality they had no capacity to grapple with. Others wanted to go out and fight – to DO SOMETHING, do anything, so they didn’t have to sit in the tension and feel so helpless. Some were simply frozen in time, barely able to understand what had happened and barely daring to move forward. So they waited. They waited for the sabbath to end.
The Rest in the Stillness of Holy Saturday
It’s fascinating that this in-between day fell on the Sabbath. It didn’t have to. God could have arranged the resurrection day any way He chose. But I wonder if there’s a gift He’s giving to those who pay attention. That first Holy Saturday, God was still working. The grand momentous, life-changing moment of celebration was coming. The day was coming when all the hard work of the prophets, all the waiting of the people, and all the hoping of the disciples would be fulfilled. It would be one of those days we all tell stories about because we were never the same afterward. But the day before resurrection Sunday…the day in-between…the ordinary sabbath – was simply a day of rest. I wonder what we would hear if we treated our in-between days and our seasons of waiting as days of stillness and rest. What might the still, small voice of our savior whisper as we lean forward with anticipation and hold our breath to see what He does?
The disciples didn’t understand what was coming. Jesus had told them several times, but there was something about it that was too significant to grasp. I don’t blame them for not understanding the big picture amidst such traumatic last moments. In the death of their dreams, the release of all they hoped Jesus would be and all they wanted Him to do, in the grappling with the reality that He could be gone forever – all they wanted was Jesus.
The Distraction of Hope Deferred
We can get distracted by so many things in our seasons of waiting or transition. We can try to control variables or worry about tiny details. We can get caught up in the wrong focus and build imagined futures on the wrong foundations. In moments when it feels like our dreams are unraveling, we can feel the same way the disciples did. But I hope we could instead begin to see these moments as invitations into rest and stillness. I hope that the thing we long for most in those moments is simply Jesus. He knows the variables that keep you up at night. He knows the unfulfilled longings you’ve built dreams around. He knows the devastation of disappointment and the discouragement of delay. But He also knows that the resurrection is closer than you realize.
If the disciples knew how close their redemption was, would they have reacted the same way? Would they have grappled with the same doubts and wrestled with the same fears?
If we saw the richness of intimacy that Jesus extends to us in the waiting and the stillness, would we still consider Holy Saturday a non-event?
These moments were never promised to be easy. Brides-to-be still get overwhelmed picking napkin colors and cake flavors. There are fights that break out over seating charts and sometimes even tears when the weariness sets in. The betrothed may lean into her fiance and groan, “I just want to be married.” Similarly, moms in labor still need to breathe through the contractions. There is still pain that comes in waves and helplessness that’s felt when she finds out, she’s still 4 cm away. She may lean into her husband and groan, “I just want to hold my baby.” The intensity of waiting and the discouragement of longing can bring us to the end of ourselves. That’s precisely when we need to lean into our savior and say, “I just want Jesus.”
The Wisdom of Excruciating Silence
Holy Saturday is a reminder that Jesus never stops working. He doesn’t always give us the blueprint with a five-year plan because He knows the limits of our understanding, and He knows what would be too much for our humanity to handle. He works slowly and intentionally over time. Even though this is uncomfortable and even painful at times, we can trust Him. We need time to grow. We need time to adjust to change. He lets us build excitement and anticipation, so when it is fulfilled, it is joyful. If we just jumped from life-altering moment to life-altering moment, it would crush us. The joy would be turned into terror. If an un-pregnant woman had to push a baby out with no preparation or a woman had to get married to a stranger with no warning, the joyful event would be turned into a traumatic one.
When Jesus rose, it changed everything. Sin, death, darkness, and evil now had no hold on humanity any longer. Jesus was more powerful, and He extended that power to His church. Now they, too, could be united with God, and the Spirit could dwell within them. But this reality-altering event was the culmination of hundreds and hundreds of years of messianic prophesies. The Jewish people had been waiting and longing for their Messiah. This longing only grew in the 400 years of silence when they didn’t hear anything from God or the prophets. After 400 years of wondering if God had abandoned them, baby Jesus was born. After He died, the disciples also must have wondered if God had abandoned them. In those many hours of stillness and silence during Holy Saturday, I’m sure their longing to see His face again and hear His voice again was unbearable. But He never forgot them. He was always coming back. Death was never the end of the story.
The Promise of Holy Saturday
Our seasons of waiting, longing, growing, changing, and transitioning are painful. Some might say excruciatingly hard; others might say excruciatingly boring. Proverbs 13:12 even reiterates this by saying, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” If you’re suffering from a little hope-deferred sickness right now, know you are in good company with the disciples themselves. God made a lot of promises, and some took a long time to fulfill. But after the silence of Holy Saturday comes the thunderous celebration of Easter. Christ has risen indeed. In Him, we find life abundant. He always keeps his promises and always comes through for His children. Though the waiting is almost unbearable, the fulfillment is a tree of life.
